What do you think?
Rate this book
The Population Explosion by Paul R. Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich's landmark 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, warned against the catastrophic consequences of unchecked population growth. In The Population Explosion, he demonstrates that the environmental and demographic crises he predicted have now arrived.
Paperback
First published April 15, 1990
9 people are currently reading
377 people want to read
About the author
Paul R. Ehrlich
92 books93 followersPaul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies), but he is better known as an ecologist and a demographer, specifically for his warnings about unchecked population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became a household name after publication of his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 6, 2008
Oh, where to begin. First, I have read many comments elsewhere online penned by people attacking the Erhlichs, who have obviously not read their books or listened to them speak. The authors are in no way in favor of any disease or atrocity wiping large numbers of people from earth, they are rather stating that if the human population continues to grow, such an event is inevitable. They do not attempt to say that they know when, where or how this precisely will occur, but rather make several reasonable suggestions for possible atrocites, as well as leave the door open for other possiblities that are as of yet, unknown to man.
They are proponents rather, of improved conditions for all humans; health, education, nourishment (diet), equal rights, etc. As well as proponents for the earth, which we make our home. For, in case anyone forgot, if the earth ceases to be a hospitable place for humans, we will all die - no if's and's or but's.
And at this time, we are doing a pretty bang-up job in our never-ending quest to use up the earth's resources with very little care in preserving it in comparison. And lest you think as a person whose mantra is reduce, reuse, recycle, that you are above all of this, Americans have one of the largest environmental footprints in the world. Unless you live on a farm, grow/raise all of your own food, do not use gasoline or the grid for energy, and you make your own clothing & necessities from the items you grow or hunt, you are still using more energy & resources than the majority of the rest of the world. Not that you shouldn't continue to be environmentally conscious, but be aware of the energy & resources you use, try to use less, and be aware that more Americans means a much greater strain on the world than more Africans, or more Indians, or more Mexicans.
The earth can simply not provide enough (water, food, clean living places) for everyone that will be here in the next millenia, unless something happens. The Erhlich's argument, is that we can decide what that something is, and by far the most agreeable choice is to voluntarily reduce reproductive rates to at or below replacement levels in all countries. They believe this can be done by reaching five goals in developing countries: Adequate nutrition, proper sanitation, basic health care, education of women, and equal rights for women. And that in developed countries a campaign for "stopping at two" should begin.
For the people in developed, educated countries who do not see population growth on this planet as any problem or challenge, I am not sure why that is. Perhaps ignorance, self-centeredness, or just plain apathy. I sincerely hope that we avoid the atrocity route, but it is not looking promising.
Ratings note - the book was 5 star for information, but sometimes got a bit dry and lengthy, so it gets 4 stars. Also, this book is scientifically written, with Notes cited in an index - which I love.
http://www.zpg.org/
They are proponents rather, of improved conditions for all humans; health, education, nourishment (diet), equal rights, etc. As well as proponents for the earth, which we make our home. For, in case anyone forgot, if the earth ceases to be a hospitable place for humans, we will all die - no if's and's or but's.
And at this time, we are doing a pretty bang-up job in our never-ending quest to use up the earth's resources with very little care in preserving it in comparison. And lest you think as a person whose mantra is reduce, reuse, recycle, that you are above all of this, Americans have one of the largest environmental footprints in the world. Unless you live on a farm, grow/raise all of your own food, do not use gasoline or the grid for energy, and you make your own clothing & necessities from the items you grow or hunt, you are still using more energy & resources than the majority of the rest of the world. Not that you shouldn't continue to be environmentally conscious, but be aware of the energy & resources you use, try to use less, and be aware that more Americans means a much greater strain on the world than more Africans, or more Indians, or more Mexicans.
The earth can simply not provide enough (water, food, clean living places) for everyone that will be here in the next millenia, unless something happens. The Erhlich's argument, is that we can decide what that something is, and by far the most agreeable choice is to voluntarily reduce reproductive rates to at or below replacement levels in all countries. They believe this can be done by reaching five goals in developing countries: Adequate nutrition, proper sanitation, basic health care, education of women, and equal rights for women. And that in developed countries a campaign for "stopping at two" should begin.
For the people in developed, educated countries who do not see population growth on this planet as any problem or challenge, I am not sure why that is. Perhaps ignorance, self-centeredness, or just plain apathy. I sincerely hope that we avoid the atrocity route, but it is not looking promising.
Ratings note - the book was 5 star for information, but sometimes got a bit dry and lengthy, so it gets 4 stars. Also, this book is scientifically written, with Notes cited in an index - which I love.
http://www.zpg.org/
January 26, 2018
The earth is in crisis from overpopulation but people don’t seem to care. Too many deny it. This book debunks arguments and lays out the facts. It is not a pleasant read. Much of it is not new, or is self-evident. Some of it is technical. But it makes its case well. The population problem is all-encompassing in its effects and this book is all-encompassing in its coverage. Are you aware of the garbage crisis?
Published in 1991, this book is not always up to date, but its premise is valid and more relevant than ever. Things have only gotten worse—the planet has added a billion and a half more people since then. Have the authors’ predictions come true? They are in progress.
The population explosion was “the most important, astounding, and far-reaching event of the twentieth century,” say the Ehrlichs. It threatens the very habitability of the planet. Why has there been so little discussion of it? They call for a mass movement to forestall global catastrophe, and discuss in detail what needs to be done.
Highly recommended to anyone who still thinks that population is not a problem.
Published in 1991, this book is not always up to date, but its premise is valid and more relevant than ever. Things have only gotten worse—the planet has added a billion and a half more people since then. Have the authors’ predictions come true? They are in progress.
The population explosion was “the most important, astounding, and far-reaching event of the twentieth century,” say the Ehrlichs. It threatens the very habitability of the planet. Why has there been so little discussion of it? They call for a mass movement to forestall global catastrophe, and discuss in detail what needs to be done.
Highly recommended to anyone who still thinks that population is not a problem.
March 24, 2015
Following the publication of The Population Bomb in 1968, the new predicament of overpopulation was inducted into our gruesome mob of predicaments. World leaders snapped to attention, contemplated their options, realized that promoting population control was political suicide, and chose to step around the messy issue. The house was not on fire today, just some smoke.
The big exception was the Chinese, whose one-child program successfully prevented 350 million births. It was sometimes heavy-handed, but ignoring runaway growth would have guaranteed a super-heavy disaster. China had the same amount of cropland as the U.S., but four times the population, and the cropland was wearing out after centuries of organic farming. The last thing they needed was more mouths to feed.
In 1968, there were 3.5 billion people, twenty years later 5.3 billion. Paul and Anne Ehrlich realized that The Population Bomb had failed to inspire miraculous change, so they wrote The Population Explosion (1990). The problems they had predicted earlier were now appearing in many places, and a new generation needed an excellent primer on overpopulation and its side effects. This second book did not repeat the 1968 error of predicting timeframes. It was much more substantial than the first, and is still illuminating to read today. Readers will recognize that the raging bloody chaos of the twenty-first century is an obvious consequence of soaring overshoot.
In this second act, the Ehrlichs took readers into the ecological equivalent of an amusement park funhouse, where loud and scary ghouls and goblins frighten us at every turn — except that their eco-spooks were genuinely dangerous. The trends in food production and population were not in any way encouraging. In 1970, population was growing by 75 million per year. By 1990, it was 95 million.
At the same time, staggering amounts of irreplaceable topsoil were being lost, aquifers were being depleted, and fields were being taken out of production because of salinization and waterlogging. The Green Revolution surge in food production was peaking, whilst population continued to soar, setting the stage for crisis. “We shouldn’t delude ourselves: the population explosion will come to an end before very long.”
North America produced 75 percent of the world’s grain exports, and the U.S. was the number one exporter. In 1988, a severe drought reduced U.S. grain production from 300 to 200 million tons. That year, Americans consumed more than they produced. A stable climate was essential for crop production. So was healthy topsoil, which was being lost at an estimated 24 to 26 billion tons per year. So was cheap and abundant oil, and water for irrigation.
In 1990, the Ehrlichs were aware that global warming might become a serious problem some day, one that might disrupt agriculture, and spark major famines. They knew that fossil energy was finite, and that we would be insane to burn it all. But peak oil and climate change were not presented as current threats in this book. The inevitable return to muscle-powered agriculture is certain take a huge bite out of food production, and an unstable climate will ensure unstable harvests.
Most of humankind lives in the northern hemisphere, in regions having a temperate climate. These regions are where most of the world’s grain is produced. Tropical regions are far more troublesome to farm, and they are home to most of the world’s hungry folks. There is no winter to provide pest control. Forest soils are typically thin. Rains are often heavy, sweeping away soil, fertilizer, and pesticides. The magic seeds of the Green Revolution do not thrive in the humid tropics.
A fascinating chapter reveals why it is so hard for us to take action on long-term issues. It’s almost impossible to see, hear, touch, or smell greenhouse gasses, overpopulation, acid rain, aquifer depletion, soil destruction, or mass extinction. These are not sudden, attention-grabbing events, like a charging rhino. They are slow motion processes that are mostly perceptible via charts, graphs, and books. We are tropical primates, and we evolved to pay close attention to the here and now, in the immediate vicinity.
Slow motion threats cannot be chased away with complaints or magical thinking. We can’t seem to get interested in making enormous sacrifices today in the hope of theoretical benefits somewhere down the road, maybe. Exponential growth can blindside us, because it’s slow at first, and gradually spins into a devastating whirlwind. Evolution did not prepare us for civilized living.
The Ehrlichs are more homocentric than ecocentric. Here’s a real boner: “The population problem is rooted in one of humanity’s greatest triumphs — overcoming natural controls on population size: predators, starvation, and disease.” Triumphs? Overcoming natural controls was the blunder that hurled us onto the path of doom! Replace “triumphs” with “mistakes” and the line makes sense. Natural controls work beautifully. There are not 7.2 billion chimps staring at cell phones.
From 1968 to today, the main goal of the Ehrlichs has been to prevent the collapse of our global civilization. In The Population Explosion, they fire hose readers with torrents of grim information. Readers are likely to conclude that today’s global civilization is already far beyond the point of no return. The solutions recommended require countless miracles, by next year, if possible — world leaders fully cooperating to rapidly reverse the course of humankind.
In a 2014 essay, they concluded that the odds of preventing collapse are now less than one percent. Every civilization collapses, and not one has ever been anything close to sustainable. Instead of rescuing civilization, wouldn’t a wiser goal be to quit destroying the ecosystem? The early civilizations destroyed themselves by overexploiting renewable resources, like water, forests, and topsoil. The newer ones are also extracting nonrenewable resources at an exponential rate. We’re beating the stuffing out of the planet.
Sadly, the super-loony consumer lifestyle has been successfully marketed as being extremely cool. Everyone in China, India, Africa, and everywhere else is eager to live as wastefully as possible, like Americans, but finite resources make this impossible. Instead, Americans need to learn how to live like the people who pick their coffee beans, and we will, sooner or later.
Civilization appears to be speeding toward decades of collapses, yet most of us have little understanding of how we created our mob of predicaments. Methinks it would be ideal to understand our boo-boos before the lights go out. It would be great to quit repeating them. Long ago, the introduction of plows increased carrying capacity. Today, their continued use is reducing carrying capacity. It’s important to understand this.
Here’s an essential sentence: “The complacency with which our education system at all levels accepts the production of citizens hopelessly unequipped to understand the population explosion and many other aspects of the modern world is a national disgrace.”
The big exception was the Chinese, whose one-child program successfully prevented 350 million births. It was sometimes heavy-handed, but ignoring runaway growth would have guaranteed a super-heavy disaster. China had the same amount of cropland as the U.S., but four times the population, and the cropland was wearing out after centuries of organic farming. The last thing they needed was more mouths to feed.
In 1968, there were 3.5 billion people, twenty years later 5.3 billion. Paul and Anne Ehrlich realized that The Population Bomb had failed to inspire miraculous change, so they wrote The Population Explosion (1990). The problems they had predicted earlier were now appearing in many places, and a new generation needed an excellent primer on overpopulation and its side effects. This second book did not repeat the 1968 error of predicting timeframes. It was much more substantial than the first, and is still illuminating to read today. Readers will recognize that the raging bloody chaos of the twenty-first century is an obvious consequence of soaring overshoot.
In this second act, the Ehrlichs took readers into the ecological equivalent of an amusement park funhouse, where loud and scary ghouls and goblins frighten us at every turn — except that their eco-spooks were genuinely dangerous. The trends in food production and population were not in any way encouraging. In 1970, population was growing by 75 million per year. By 1990, it was 95 million.
At the same time, staggering amounts of irreplaceable topsoil were being lost, aquifers were being depleted, and fields were being taken out of production because of salinization and waterlogging. The Green Revolution surge in food production was peaking, whilst population continued to soar, setting the stage for crisis. “We shouldn’t delude ourselves: the population explosion will come to an end before very long.”
North America produced 75 percent of the world’s grain exports, and the U.S. was the number one exporter. In 1988, a severe drought reduced U.S. grain production from 300 to 200 million tons. That year, Americans consumed more than they produced. A stable climate was essential for crop production. So was healthy topsoil, which was being lost at an estimated 24 to 26 billion tons per year. So was cheap and abundant oil, and water for irrigation.
In 1990, the Ehrlichs were aware that global warming might become a serious problem some day, one that might disrupt agriculture, and spark major famines. They knew that fossil energy was finite, and that we would be insane to burn it all. But peak oil and climate change were not presented as current threats in this book. The inevitable return to muscle-powered agriculture is certain take a huge bite out of food production, and an unstable climate will ensure unstable harvests.
Most of humankind lives in the northern hemisphere, in regions having a temperate climate. These regions are where most of the world’s grain is produced. Tropical regions are far more troublesome to farm, and they are home to most of the world’s hungry folks. There is no winter to provide pest control. Forest soils are typically thin. Rains are often heavy, sweeping away soil, fertilizer, and pesticides. The magic seeds of the Green Revolution do not thrive in the humid tropics.
A fascinating chapter reveals why it is so hard for us to take action on long-term issues. It’s almost impossible to see, hear, touch, or smell greenhouse gasses, overpopulation, acid rain, aquifer depletion, soil destruction, or mass extinction. These are not sudden, attention-grabbing events, like a charging rhino. They are slow motion processes that are mostly perceptible via charts, graphs, and books. We are tropical primates, and we evolved to pay close attention to the here and now, in the immediate vicinity.
Slow motion threats cannot be chased away with complaints or magical thinking. We can’t seem to get interested in making enormous sacrifices today in the hope of theoretical benefits somewhere down the road, maybe. Exponential growth can blindside us, because it’s slow at first, and gradually spins into a devastating whirlwind. Evolution did not prepare us for civilized living.
The Ehrlichs are more homocentric than ecocentric. Here’s a real boner: “The population problem is rooted in one of humanity’s greatest triumphs — overcoming natural controls on population size: predators, starvation, and disease.” Triumphs? Overcoming natural controls was the blunder that hurled us onto the path of doom! Replace “triumphs” with “mistakes” and the line makes sense. Natural controls work beautifully. There are not 7.2 billion chimps staring at cell phones.
From 1968 to today, the main goal of the Ehrlichs has been to prevent the collapse of our global civilization. In The Population Explosion, they fire hose readers with torrents of grim information. Readers are likely to conclude that today’s global civilization is already far beyond the point of no return. The solutions recommended require countless miracles, by next year, if possible — world leaders fully cooperating to rapidly reverse the course of humankind.
In a 2014 essay, they concluded that the odds of preventing collapse are now less than one percent. Every civilization collapses, and not one has ever been anything close to sustainable. Instead of rescuing civilization, wouldn’t a wiser goal be to quit destroying the ecosystem? The early civilizations destroyed themselves by overexploiting renewable resources, like water, forests, and topsoil. The newer ones are also extracting nonrenewable resources at an exponential rate. We’re beating the stuffing out of the planet.
Sadly, the super-loony consumer lifestyle has been successfully marketed as being extremely cool. Everyone in China, India, Africa, and everywhere else is eager to live as wastefully as possible, like Americans, but finite resources make this impossible. Instead, Americans need to learn how to live like the people who pick their coffee beans, and we will, sooner or later.
Civilization appears to be speeding toward decades of collapses, yet most of us have little understanding of how we created our mob of predicaments. Methinks it would be ideal to understand our boo-boos before the lights go out. It would be great to quit repeating them. Long ago, the introduction of plows increased carrying capacity. Today, their continued use is reducing carrying capacity. It’s important to understand this.
Here’s an essential sentence: “The complacency with which our education system at all levels accepts the production of citizens hopelessly unequipped to understand the population explosion and many other aspects of the modern world is a national disgrace.”
August 22, 2013
This is a followup to Population Bomb published back in the late 60s. The only difference between the two is more up-to-date data, and a subtle built-in, "I told you so." If any politician had any sense of what is right, they would start a movement to have this book become mandatory reading for middle-schoolers and on up for no other reason than to point out all the other problems we face - financial, health, resources, and sustainability has uncontrolled population growth at its heart.
Read
July 26, 2020This classic defined the role of population in the unfolding collapse of society. There is little current competition for Dr. Ehrlich's view, however, because mainstream forces have firmly enforced the taboo about public discussion of population limitations. My analysis directly addresses why individual humans still support this taboo, and what is the psychological denial involved. An irony related to this is that Dr. Ehrlich himself (we were both advisors of a limited-growth group called Growthbusters) is still so under attack by the mainstream he has not been able to focus any attention on the psychological issues. With the current change of world attitude that has empowered groups like the Extinction Rebellion, and huge increases in women refusing to have children, I believe the world is ready to read comprehensive explanations for the population problem, which I am trying to provide.
November 24, 2022
Es un libro clásico que hoy se hace necesario. Hay suficientes argumentos neomalthusianos que deben reflexionarse en una era marcada por el colapso medioambiental.
Ahora bien, eso no implica aceptar todos los argumentos y teorias de los autores. Si bien el libro es utilisimo para repensar si realmente debe seguir alimentándose una altísima natalidad o mejor no propugnarla, nos encontramos con muchas carencias en la exposición, así como contradicciones (¿el impacto negativo tiene que ver con el número de gente o con su forma de vida?), por no hablar de cierto tufillo conservador en ocasiones.
No obstante, reitero que es necesario leer este libro para no desechar las teorías neomalthusianas acerca del exceso demográfico caracterizandolas como tesis fascistas o izquierdistas. La cr��tica al exceso poblacional puede y debe hacerse, y los Ehrlich son un buen primer punto de apoyo.
Ahora bien, eso no implica aceptar todos los argumentos y teorias de los autores. Si bien el libro es utilisimo para repensar si realmente debe seguir alimentándose una altísima natalidad o mejor no propugnarla, nos encontramos con muchas carencias en la exposición, así como contradicciones (¿el impacto negativo tiene que ver con el número de gente o con su forma de vida?), por no hablar de cierto tufillo conservador en ocasiones.
No obstante, reitero que es necesario leer este libro para no desechar las teorías neomalthusianas acerca del exceso demográfico caracterizandolas como tesis fascistas o izquierdistas. La cr��tica al exceso poblacional puede y debe hacerse, y los Ehrlich son un buen primer punto de apoyo.
September 27, 2023
This is an informative book that addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the growth of the world's population. Through solid research, the author explores the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, as well as possible solutions. While the book provides a clear overview of the issue, some readers may find the reading dense due to the amount of data and statistics presented. In addition, the lack of focus on practical solutions may leave some looking for further guidance.
March 27, 2020
An extremely relevant book but just three stars as it is now very dated. I must try and find a more up to date book on this subject. It is very well written and informed, but the quoted population numbers are so off the mark as to be annoying to say the least.
September 24, 2018
Scared the bejeebus out of me when I read it in college, would probably do the same now.
April 2, 2021
Enough to scare people into thinking about this
Read
March 24, 2025See if books could kill episode on the population bomb
December 18, 2015
Some things should be required in order to graduate high school and being allowed to procreate. A course in LOGIC, even if it's just pass/fail, and reading this or a similar book. Humans are delusional and refuse to accept the earth and it's resources are finite. We need a serious wake up call, as there are ALREADY too many people on this planet, as the extinction of other species has proven. We are now a cancer on the planet.
October 15, 2010
A glimpse back at the exhausted voices of Paul & Anne Ehrlich makes reading the headlines today even more ridiculous than they've become. A great read, and a great lesson, for those interested in preserving our natural resources for the generations doomed (hopefully not) to follow in our brash footsteps.
March 8, 2009
Well-researched... as a book I'll give it 4 stars... but the thesis is a load of crap so it averages to 2.
May 25, 2015
Very interesting especially since it was written in the late 1980's....depressing because not enough has been done to change the way we live.
September 22, 2015
The catastrophic consecuences on the ecology by the overpopulation of the planet
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews